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<h3><br>

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<h3> History
</h3>

<p> Lazarus was started in February of 1999. It was primarily
founded by three individuals: </p>

<ul>

  <li>Cliff Baeseman</li>

  <li>Shane Miller</li>

  <li>Michael A. Hess</li>

</ul>

All three had attempted to get involved with the Megido project which
dissolved. In frustration they started the Lazarus project. It has had
a steady growth of supporters and developers during the following
years. Of the three founders, only Michael A. Hess is still involved
with the project.<br>

<br>

The next oldest member of the team is Marc Weustink. He got involved
with the project in Aug. 1999. Following him is Mattias Gaertner who
got involved in Sept. 2000. Both of them have been the major
contributors to the core of what makes Lazarus tick.
<p></p>

<h3> So just what is Lazarus?
</h3>

<p> Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate
Delphi. Free Pascal is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32,
OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand
and compile Delphi syntax, which is of course OOP. Lazarus is the part
of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like
programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be
a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write
once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on
all of the above platforms it means you don't need to do any recoding
to produce identical products for different platforms.
</p>

<h3> Yeah, but what about the GUI? What widget set are you using?
</h3>

<p> That is the neat part. You decide. Lazarus is being developed
to be totally and completely API independent. Once you write your code
you just link it against the API widget set of your choice. If you want
to use GTK+, great! If you want it to be Gnome compliant, great! As
long as the interface code for the widget set you want to use is
available you can link to it. If it isn't available, well you can write
it.
</p>

<p> For example. Let's say you are creating a product on Windows
using the standard Windows widgets. Now you want to create a Linux
version. First you decide what widget set you want to use. Let's assume
you want to use gtk+. So you copy the code over to your Linux
development machine, compile, and link against the gtk+ interface unit.
That's it. You've now just created a Linux version of the Windows
product without any additional coding.
</p>

<p> At this point in the development we are using gtk+ as our
initial API widget set. Some work is also being done with Qt and the
Win32 API. As soon as Lazarus reaches a 1.0 release developers will be
able to start to create the interface unit to tie the LCL (Lazarus
Component Libraries) to other widget sets.
</p>

<h3> So is this thing really RAD like Delphi?
</h3>

<p> It sure is. Is it totally completed? No not yet. The forms
design portion is still in need of a great deal of development. The
over all IDE is complete and can be used for most programming needs.
Several aspects of the project are still in need of help. Hint. Hint. </p>

<h3> Can I use my existing Delphi code?
</h3>

<p> Some of it yes. If the code is standard Delphi pascal and it
uses the standard components found in Delphi then the answer is yes. If
it uses some specific database, OCX, or DCU then the answer would be
no. These items are specific to Windows and would only work on and
within Windows. However, if you are only looking to create a Windows
product using Free Pascal and Lazarus then the answer would be yes.
This hasn't been added to the LCL yet but it should be possible in the
future.
</p>

<h3> Can I create commercial products with this?
</h3>

<p> Yes. The code for the Free Pascal compiler is licensed under
the GPL. This means that it is open source, free, whatever name you
want to stick to it. You can modify the code if you wish but you MUST
distribute those changes or make them available to others if they wish
to use it.
</p>

<p> The FCL (Free Pascal Component Libraries) and the LCL (which
will eventually become part of the FCL) are licensed under a modified
LGPL. In a nut shell this means that you can write your own proprietary
software that just links to these libraries. You can sell your
application without the need to supply or make available your code.
However, as with the compiler if you make modifications to the FCL or
LCL you must make those changes available to the general public and the
world.
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